An Unexpected Addition (Thilbo - Bagginshield)

Snow

"Be careful not to spill any ink on the floor, Frodo."

The hobbits were both sitting in the heart of Erebor's massive library, their bodies warmed by the blazing fireplace on the eastern wall. Bilbo himself had been indexing and cataloguing several large piles of manuscripts since very early that morning, wandering to the front at times to assist Ori and Dhola with a particularly perplexing heap of far-eastern maps. His nephew had spent most of the day with Donel and Nori, the latter of whom had volunteered to watch the youngsters for the afternoon. But it was approaching suppertime now, so Bilbo would sadly have to pull himself away from these fascinating diagrams of a far-off jungle and instead face a hoard of hungry dwarves. Honestly, the hobbit was trying to figure out if some of them had hollow legs or a second stomach, because Fíli and Bofur should not be able to eat that much in a single sitting.

"I'm almost done," said Frodo, his pink tongue sticking out in concentration. "Do I have to use Merry's fancy name at the end?"

"No, his normal name will work just fine," answered the uncle. "Just make sure to spell it correctly or your letter might fall into the hands of yet another relative of the same title. Valar knows there's enough of them."

"Okie dokie."

They spent the next few minutes in relative silence, the shuffling of papers and the faint sound of Ori jabbering away to his aunt acting as a soothing agent to Bilbo's excited mind. He'd been itching to explore the archives for weeks now, so the past three days had been paradise for the bookish hobbit, maps and books quickly overtaking his rooms and an unused corner of Fíli's bedroom as well. Thorin and his sister had opened one of the floor passageways that led down into the Deep Archives, Bilbo easily squeezing his way to and fro in the dark rooms beneath the library. And after Nori had dropped the boys off, plucky little Donel had offered to squeeze into the tighter areas in the back, retrieving dozens of maps and tomes from the dustiest corners of the archives.

"I've got another one," stated Donel, signaling for the older hobbit to help him up the ladder. "But it's really strange looking. What's it say?"

Bilbo settled the little boy beside him on the floor, unrolling the ancient map from the string and clamps that bound it. Yellowed with time and disuse, the entire left portion of it would have to be meticulously restored, but Bilbo was able to decipher a plethora of runes and elvish script in the upper right corner. Unfortunately, the hobbit wasn't familiar with either of them.

"I'm not quite sure," admitted Bilbo. "But this top one here is underlined, so I've a strong suspicion that that's the name of the region. Desdursyton, I think it says. What a peculiar name, if that's what it is."

"And I found these ones, too," said Donel with a proud grin. "They'd fallen back behind the shelves. Got myself a splinter to get them."

"Here, let me see that? Ah, it's not too deep. I should be able to get that out with a few pushes," reassured Bilbo, his nails gently working at the irritated skin on Donel's left thumb. "We hobbits are always getting splinters when working out in our gardens. I've an unfortunate habit of getting them myself. Especially in this one little spot on my right foot just between my biggest toes. Never developed quite enough calluses there, I suppose. An unpleasant predicament for a hobbit, as I'm sure you can believe. And it's quite...ah! There we go! No more splinter."

Donel had closed his eyes sometime during the procedure, a pained grimace on his face as Bilbo pried the skinny sliver of wood from his tender finger. But Donel was a real trooper, if you asked Bilbo. The red-haired dwarfling did not release a single complaint or whine during the whole ordeal, something Bilbo knew he had not accomplished whenever Belladonna pulled a splinter out of him.